Posts filed under 'Google'
It’s been a crazy couple of months. Not only did my
Conversion Rater › Edit — WordPress2007/04/29/yahoo-acquires-right-media-im-a-yahooligan/”>employer agree to be acquired by Yahoo!, but our competitive landscape has changed dramatically with Google acquiring Doubleclick, Microsoft acquiring aQuantive, WPP acquiring 24/7 RealMedia and AOL acquiring AdTech AG to go along with what they already own in Advertising.com.
Additionally, there are still some other large players who are also in the game such as News Corp./Myspace/Strategic Data Corp, and IAC/Ask.com.
Obviously this is a big land grab for these large companies, combined with trying to get innovative companies who are pushing things forward in online advertising. The Wall St. Journal talks about the ad exchange concept and how it relates to these acquisitions.
The media and blogs have been covering these stories quite a bit, but I’ve seen a lot of writers and commenters really not having a great gasp on what pieces of the advertising business each company has now, how they all stack up, and what it all means going forward. So, I’ll try and help out.
Who’s Got What?
After the acquisitions are all complete, we need to stack up all the areas that matter in the online advertising battle that’s taking shape. (A checkmark means they have an asset, the 1/2 means they do to some extent but not to the same level as the other companies).
Asset | Google | Yahoo! | MSFT | WPP | AOL | NewsCorp | IAC/Ask |
|---|
Search Inventory |  | | | | |  | |
Search Ad Platform | | | | | | | |
Contextual Network | | | | | | | |
Display Ad Network | | | | | | | |
Ad Serving | | | | | | | |
Ad Exchange | | | | | | | |
Ad Agencies | | | | | | | |
Owns Own Content | | | | | | | |
Now that we have our handy chart, let’s break it down by asset.
Search Inventory
This refers to the company actually owning search engine ad inventory, which basically means do they have significant search results in which they can show ads against. Search inventory is generally very valuable to advertisers and generates good revenues for the company because users often have an intent to buy or act and the technology can match ads to their intent.
Google is the king here with over 60% of the market with Yahoo also having a nice chunk, then it tapers off with Microsoft and and IAC/Ask.com. We’ll give News Corp. a 1/2 because Myspace does have a search feature that creates a chunk of inventory that Google currently monetizes for them.
Search Ad Platform
Just having search inventory doesn’t mean you have a good advertiser platform to monetize that inventory. Google has Adwords, Yahoo has Yahoo Search Marketing (Panama), Microsoft has AdCenter, and Ask.com has their Sponsored Listings. We’ll give AOL a 1/2 because they have a white-labeled version of Adwords to buy their search inventory separately.
Contextual Ad Network
Now that we know who has strong search ad platforms, do they have a publisher network in which they can give their advertisers additional reach through placing contextual ads on publisher sites? Google leads the way here with Adsense being the strongest ad network. Yahoo! has the Yahoo Publisher Network which has played second fiddle to Adsense but has a strong publisher base. Microsoft has announced a beta of their publisher network, but as far as I know isn’t accepting invitations from it anywhere so it gets a half point. Ask.com rounds out the group with the announcement of their contextual program as well, although I haven’t seen this in action anywhere either so we’ll give them a half instead of a full check mark.
Display Ad Network
While contextual networks are great, they aren’t the only ad game in town as the display ad has continued to be the leader in high-dollar brand advertising, and has also made a strong run over the past few years in direct response. Ad exchanges, optimization, and increased use of data and technology has allowed the display ad to make a comeback. Although some would argue that it never left.
I was tempted to give Google a half mark on this one, as their display advertising efforts through Adsense haven’t set the world on fire, but their acquisition of Doubleclick makes it fairly obvious that this asset will exist fully in the arsenal. While Doubleclick isn’t an ad network today, it’s likely Google is going to integrate/leverage display capabilities to have a serious display network.
Yahoo! has such a vast amount of content and so many properties that they essentially are an ad network just on their own site. To add on though, in the agreed acquisition of Right Media they also add on a good sized network in Right Media’s Remix Network. Additionally, the Right Media Exchange has over 60 ad network clients, so the display ad network business is definitely a strong point for Yahoo! moving forward.
Microsoft is now a stronger player in the display ad network business by buying aQuantive which has a high-quality network in DrivePM. They also have started to act a bit like a network with representing Facebook’s inventory. WPP is a player with the acquisition of 24/7 Real Media which has a strong display ad network. AOL definitely gets a strong checkmark as the owners of one of the largest display ad networks in Advertising.com.
One could argue that News Corp has a display ad network of it’s own properties such as Myspace, FoxSports, Scout.com, AmericanIdol.com, etc. However, they’ll get credit for that in the “Owns own content” category. IAC/Ask is in a similar situation with the content properties they own, but neither are quite display ad networks (yet).
Ad Serving
Having networks is a primary driver of revenue due to the nice margins, but there is an extreme amount of power when you control the ad serving infrastructure of the web. It’s another example of how the online advertising wars are playing out on many fronts. It’s usually quite easy for publishers and advertisers to switch ad networks they work with, but there is usually a much deeper integration with your ad serving partner.
Google has long been rumored to be building their own ad server, but the Doubleclick acquisition gives them both advertiser and publisher ad serving. Yahoo! has had a strong internal ad server for a long time, and the acquisition of Right Media gives them an immediate ad server to offer to clients as well. Microsoft is now fully capable with the Atlas and Accipter ad serving platforms being part of their acquisition. Atlas is one of the leading advertiser and agency ad serving platforms, while Accipter is stronger in the publisher realm. WPP brought 24/7 Real Media’s Open Ad Stream ad serving platform into their war chest, which has a strong publisher base as well. AOL also purchased Ad Tech:AG, a German ad serving firm that will be part of their Advertising.com unit. One would have to think they have plans to roll this out and start pushing their own ad serving technology.
News Corp comes in with a half-check due to their acquisition of Strategic Data Corp. It’s not clear yet whether they wanted to just own that technology internally, or actually ever roll it out to any clients.
Ad Exchange
Perhaps my favorite piece of the puzzle! Right Media’s success combined with Doubleclick announcing their own soon-to-be exchange, and general buzz about exchanges everywhere leads me to believe it’s a key piece of the advertising wars. Why? Well, exchanges remove friction, connect partners, and provide a common trading platform in which all the players can benefit. Whoever can build the largest and most successful exchange will continue to attract buyers, sellers, and brokers of all shapes and sizes which will grow their advertising ecosystem. An exchange also can tie in to the other categories in this post such as ad networks, ad serving, and other technology.
Google gets a half-check because they have an exchange in the works with their acquisition of Doubleclick. It’s not a full check because it isn’t launched yet, and I’ve heard rumors from some that it could just be more like a big ad network. Without knowing all the details, it didn’t make sense to give them a full check yet. Yahoo! gets the only full checkmark in this category by acquiring Right Media. Right Media is a full-blown exchange, has been for over two years, and has over 20,000 companies buying and selling via the technology to the tune of over 120 billion ad impressions per month.
Ad Agencies
Ad agencies are important because they are essentially the controllers of the majority of brand advertising dollars spent on the web today. They choose the tools and platforms they want to work with, and those companies benefit and will continue to benefit in the future by getting more access to the ad spend from the agencies. While I don’t think it’s totally necessary in the advertising wars to actually own agencies as a couple of companies now do, but it is important to have your ad tools and platforms in heavy use by the agencies in order to get more access to the dollars.
Beyond having agencies buying from Adwords, Google now has their hooks more in the agency market from the DART For Advertisers product they control from the Doubleclick acquisition. DART for Advertisers is one of the most commonly used ad servers in the agency world. Yahoo! does have agencies buying through Panama, but currently has no tools being used by agencies beyond that.
Microsoft is now an agency powerhouse. Not only is the Atlas ad server an agency favorite, they also now own a significant share of the agency market from the aQuantive acquisition. It’ll be interesting to see how the agencies owned by Microsoft choose to work with the other major players in the space. WPP is a conglomerate of agencies, so it’s safe to say they’ve got this business covered. Will their agencies adopt Open Ad Stream as their ad server of choice?
Owns Own Content
One thing that I think is sometimes lost in all this is the power of the companies that own and control their own content. It puts you less in the position of relying in outside companies to actually have a place to serve your ads and provide advertisers value. It also allows you to test and develop using your own properties instead of having to put clients through it, and it can be leveraged in many other ways such as behavioral targeting.
I didn’t clearly define whether search results count or not as owning your own content. However, Google obviously leveraged this a great deal by getting advertisers to advertise on their search results that they then can also push out through their content network. Either way, Google qualifies for a full check since they’ve also continued to grow their services like Gmail and Google Calendar where they can show ads, but also in acquiring YouTube.
Yahoo! is the big daddy of owning your own content. The Yahoo! properties are vast and large and in almost every key vertical. As strong as Google is in search, Yahoo! holds a similar edge in content ownership. An example of the properties they own which usually fall right around the top of all web properties in each vertical: Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Calendar, My Yahoo!, del.icio.us, Flickr, Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Video, etc.
Microsoft is also strong in the content game with MSN, Hotmail, MSN Search, etc. They aren’t quite up to Yahoo’s level but are a serious player. AOL is similar as well with all the AOL verticals and properties and definitely deserves a full check. News Corp is good as well with the behemoth known as MySpace, Fox News, Fox Sports, Scout.com, AmericanIdol.com, etc. Not to be left out, IAC is yet another strong content player with Ask.com, Ticketmaster.com, Match.com, CitySearch, CollegeHumor, and more.
Summary
Where does all this leave things in the battle for online advertising supremacy? Assuming all the acquisitions go through, there is the integration challenge for each company to go through, as well as prioritizing what they’re going to execute and how. Then they actually have to go execute on it. It’s impossible to call a winner at this point, but looking at the chart it’s clear to see that Google and Yahoo! are the best positioned to fight out the battle, with Microsoft also close enough to keep their name in the mix.
Looking at Google and Yahoo! specifically, they each have some strengths and weaknesses that will make it very interesting. Google has the advantage in search monetization, the Adsense network, and in ad serving. Yahoo! has strengths in their owned content, ad exchange, and display ad business. Which company can close the gaps on the other, and who will move forward with the right strategy over the next few years? Only time will tell, but you can bet it’s going to be fun to watch and participate in. I also wouldn’t count out the other players such as News Corp, AOL, etc. as they are all capable of making moves, and are each very successful in their current strong areas at this point. We also may see many deep partnerships come into play instead of having each company trying to own their own asset. Let the fun continue.
June 18th, 2007
As mentioned in my previous post, I just bought a new Dell desktop. One of the things I immediately noticed was the behavior outlined in this blog post about Google and Dell “hijacking” browser address bar type-ins to go to advertising-heavy pages.
Don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of advertising on the web, but what I didn’t like was that I in the few minutes I spent trying to investigate this on my own machine I didn’t figure out how to turn it off. I primarily use Firefox anyway so I figured I wouldn’t have to deal with it anyway. However, I’ve noticed that even though Firefox thinks it’s my default browser (as I selected it should be) various other applications on my computer keep launching IE7 when they launch web pages.
While I think it’s okay for Google and Dell to work together on providing search results with some advertising, what they’re doing here is pretty offensive with the page above the fold being entirely ads and the difficulty of removing the behavior from your system.
May 23rd, 2007
Robert Scoble posted today about his observation about Google putting fewer ads on their search results, and how a Google employee confirmed this and said internal research showed that in the short term this costs them revenue, but in the long term it helps revenue because users trust the ads more and it leads to more clicks and buying behavior.
First, I think we have to ask if we believe this is true. I’d guess that Google would not make such a move without being very confident that it was going to eventually lead to more revenue. As a public company, it’s even risky to hurt short term results in this manner, so I’m betting it doesn’t even hurt their short term revenue results that much.
Scoble then theorizes that the purpose of this is also related to their Pay-Per-Action program:
Anyway, Google is doing that to make way for its new “pay per action†advertising type (announced yesterday). This is brilliant. Advertisers are going to LOVE this. Imagine I ran a print shop, like PrintingForLess. Now I could tie my advertising onto actually getting a sale, or getting a good lead. You see why Google needed more relevant advertising before turning this on. They want only potential buyers to see an ad. Anything else is noise. Noise reduces buying behavior.
Well, something doesn’t jive here because according to Google the Pay-Per-Action ads are only going to appear on their Adsense content network:
Pay-per-action ads are eligible to appear on publisher sites in the Google content network, and publishers can choose specific pay-per-action ads that are relevant to their site to run in new ad units that they create.
So, for at least right now, Google is not putting PPA ads in their search results, which is the area that Scoble is talking about. So either Scoble is incorrect in his theory, or his Google contact gave him information that points to it being likely that PPA ads will be showing up on Google search results soon.
March 22nd, 2007
There are lots of bloggers talking about Google’s launch of their Pay-Per-Action (beta) program which is really just adding CPA ad units to Adsense with a name to not associate it with CPA directly.
My first reaction is that people are jumping to lots of conclusions about what this program means, what it will do, who it’s competing with, and what it will mean for advertisers, publishers, and arbitrageurs.
I was going to refrain from making a post about this until I had really digested it more and potentially even tried out the beta program if accepted, but since Pete Caputa somehow confused me for being smart, I’ll at least post a few thoughts.
CPA is harder on publishers
There’s no arguing that with CPA ads, publishers take all the risk. This is good for advertisers, and generally it’s harder on publishers. However, GOOD publishers who understand CPA, persuasion architecture, delivering users who will convert, and funneling your site correctly, can actually make more money from CPA then they would from CPC or even a flat CPM. Publishers who don’t understand these things and are used the normal Adsense model will most likely struggle to generate more money with this ad type because of the difference in how you monetize a user.
CPA is a different ball game
There is an assumption that this will be a major challenge to affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Linkshare. Maybe it will be, but I can say that these networks provide a lot of value because they help advertisers create the right kinds of creatives and really optimize CPA. How much advice is Google going to really give on setting everything up? How much human touch will they provide to this process? With Google’s program, if the advertiser’s landing page sucks will Google consult to help them improve it? Sure, they provide access to their Website Optimizer Tool, but those who have tried multi-variate testing know that isn’t just a cut and dry automated process like Google is trying to make all of this.
Will this hurt lead generation or affiliate arbitrage?
I’m not sure I care. Businesses need to provide value, and if Google just made it more efficient so that it’s harder to arbitrage stuff, so be it. I’m not necessarily against arbitrage, but you can’t expect companies to leave things inefficient. Arbitrageurs are always looking for an edge, and most likely they’ll still find one somehow and somewhere.
Overall thoughts
Until we see the program in action, see what advertisers succeed with it, and how publishers can work with it and what types of results they get it’s hard to predict what will happen. The general assumption is that since Google has dominated with Adwords/Adsense/CPC they will dominate CPA by adding it to the mix. Well, Google HAS NOT dominated CPM and display advertising when they added it to Adwords/Adsense. I don’t think it’s a given by any means that this will work as well, however I do give it a better shot. I think the CPA direct marketing advertisers are closer to being the same group that does well with CPC now, while flat CPM and display advertising tend to be a different type of advertiser. It will be interesting to watch.
March 20th, 2007
As a web analytics junkie I tend to notice trends and changes in my blog statistics. One recent trend I’ve noticed is that I get more search traffic from Google Blog Search than I used to get.
One tip I have for people on this, is that some web analytics applications make it hard to tell the difference between regular Google Search traffic and Google Blog Search traffic. Google Analytics for example lumps them both together as “google(organic)” in the search keyword statistic. My new favorite easy analytics application of the moment Clicky has a link to each actual seach query so you can see that it’s from Google Blog Search instead.
Why am I seeing more Google Blog Search traffic? I think it’s a combination of reasons. I would bet that Google Blog Search is getting more traffic and queries than the past as blogs grow in the public conscious and people realize Google has such a tool. (Why isn’t it an option on the Google home page?) I also think that this blog has continued to get links and gain relevance which helps it rank higher in Google Blog Search results.
That last point brings up a question though, how do you optimize your blog for Google Blog Search? Is it the same factors that the normal Google search uses? I’d guess that the normal factors still apply, but the Google Operating System blog has done some Google patent research and talks about both positive and negative factors that influence your blog’s ranking.
A couple of interesting positive factors were the number of feed subscribers (how does Google get this from other feed providers? Or is it just Google Reader?), links from webmail and chat (how do they know if someone clicks a Yahoo mail link and lands on my blog?), and using tags to categorize posts. The negative factors seemed aimed at spam, but some tips there would be to make sure you have multiple links in posts, avoid spammy words, and don’t duplicate too much content.
March 19th, 2007
While doing some research, an astute coworker of mine noticed that the Google Enterprise Solutions page has links to their partners’ websites who are part of their Enterprise program. What’s interesting about this is that the page has a Google PageRank of 7/10, and to get listed on that page you have to pay Google $10,000 per year to be part of their program.
Before you claim I’m overreacting, let me state my case with some evidence:
1. The only way to get a link on this page is to pay Google $10,000 per year.
2. Google is against the inclusion of paid links in their Pagerank algorithm that helps determine search results. Here is a quote from their Corporate Technology page:
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google’s technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.
3. Google’s most prominent blogger Matt Cutts has spoken out against paid links and recommended use of the rel=”NOFOLLOW” attribute.
4. Google could add the “rel=NOFOLLOW” attribute to the links on that page in order to not pass Pagerank credit from the page to the partner websites. According to the Wikipedia page on Pagerank:
In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, “nofollow”, for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website builders and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a “vote” in the PageRank system.
Why isn’t Google putting the rel=”NOFOLLOW” on these links?
As a side note, the links to Google in this blog post have the rel=”NOFOLLOW” on them because I don’t want to be passing on PageRank to that Enterprise Partners page.
5. Google could also just not rank the Enterprise Partners page with PageRank as they appeared to have done with their Adsense Case Studies page. You’ll see it is not ranked, and the page has existed for a long time meaning Google has intentionally chosen not to rankthis page. They also don’t even link to the publisher websites or in the case studies themselves for the most part, they just write out the text like ApartmentRatings.com with no link. However, I did find that a couple of the older case studies like the Weblogs Inc. one that do have links out. Of course, there is no page rank on the case study giving them no benefit.
Why do the partners paying $10,000 seem to get links with a high PageRank?
6. Google IS including the Enterprise partners page in their index which leads me to believe they are counting the Pagerank on the page. See the #1 result on the search query for “google earth specialist”.
The counter argument to my evidence is that the partners really aren’t paying for the link, but that the $10,000 fee is for the overall Enterprise partner program. True, but the ONLY way to get listed on the Enterprise Partners page is to pay Google $10,000 per year, which means the ONLY way to get a link on that page is to PAY FOR IT!
From what I can tell Google is not taking the steps to exclude the power of those links in their algorithm. Those are not just “editorial votes” as a natural link is supposed to be in the algorithm, those links are there because money exchanged hands.
I actually agree with Google’s stance on not including paid links in their algorithm, but there’s really three options here:
1. Google is being sloppy and not intending to be counting paid links, but they are.
2. Google is taking money for links and looking the other way.
3. I’m missing something, please let me know if I am.
In closing, I see that Google acquisition YouTube.com has now been added to the Google Products page that happens to be a PR9 page. If they’re charging $10,000 for a PR7 link, let’s hope YouTube didn’t have to give back too much of that $1.65 billion to be listed on this page!
UPDATE:
Apparently Google had a different but somewhat similar problem with using NOFOLLOW on most of the links on Google Video except for the links to their advertisers. Matt Cutts responded in the comments that it was a mistake and would be fixed as fast as possible. Good to see them fix and own up to the mistake. But the question remains, is the case I mention above a mistake?
UPDATE Part 2:
The page in question no longer carries a Pagerank. I’m guessing from the comments Matt Cutts had this changed. Thanks for taking action Matt, as I believe Google should be careful with links that may be considered “questionable” on whether or not they are pure natural links.
February 23rd, 2007
The Google Adwords/Adsense individual site targeting has always been available on through CPM ad purchases. When Google first launched this ability, it had a $2.00 minimum CPM bid, then later dropped to a $1.00 CPM, then later dropped to $0.25 CPM, and now they’ve announced a beta starting in March for advertisers to test buying on sites directly on a CPC basis.
Frankly I’m surprised it took them this long. The reason they had to drop the minimum bid each time was because advertisers haven’t gotten results to make these campaigns profitable. Every time I’ve launched a new Adwords campaign I try site-targeting, and it’s just never profitable on a CPM basis for me. It ends up costing way more per click than buying in CPC via the search or content network.
While my experience is obviously anecdotal, I’m sure many advertisers experience the same thing. Additionally, when spending so much time focusing on CPC, it can feel a tad strange shifting your focus to looking at CPM campaigns all within the same campaign screen where your goals and metrics may be different.
So, while I’ve been critical of Google lately, I think this is a wise move for them, publishers, and advertisers. It’s what they know best, it’s what the advertisers using their system are used to, and it should mean more advertisers are doing site-targeted buying meaning more competition and thus higher revenue for publishers.
February 13th, 2007
I always enjoy posts from bloggers where they mention the top tools or resources they use to master whatever it is they are an expert in. Along those lines, I thought it’d be a good dea to pass along the list of the top ad tools I use and know of to help web publishers and bloggers make more money.
The basic assumption for these tools to be useful to you is that you run a blog or website that uses advertising to make money whether that advertising is sold directly by you, through an ad network, or you use a contextual solution like Google Adsense or YPN. Some of them are very direct in how they help make more money, and some of them are helpful tools that provide information to help you make more money from your advertising. For the most part they are free tools with a couple of exceptions.
CrazyEgg
Self-described as a visualization tool to improve, test, and track your site, CrazyEgg is best used for publishers to generate “heatmaps” of where people are clicking on their site. This data can be used to make better decisions on where to place ads to get more clicks and response from users. CrazyEgg allows you to set up tests so you can effectively test the difference between two different ad sizes in the same spot, two different color palettes, or totally changing an ad’s location.
It’s easy to setup, it just requires signing up for an account and placing some code in your page footer. You then create a test and start tracking clicks. The free version allows you to track up to 5,000 visits and track 4 different pages at once. There are paid plans if you want to do more in-depth tests.
RMX Direct
If you’re working with ad networks, you should be working with RMX Direct. RMX Direct is a free ad network manager that helps you sell your inventory easily and for maximum revenue. It allows you to work with networks directly that are part of the Right Media Exchange, as well as auction your own ad networks like Google Adsense, YPN, Valueclick, Tribal Fusion, or anyone else.
Auctioning your inventory is the best way to maximize your revenue, and RMX Direct has other cool features that make managing ad networks a much better process. Check out a previous post about using it manage contextual ad networks.
Feedburner
If you run a blog or a website with RSS, you need to be running your RSS feed(s) through Feedburner. There are numerous benefits alone in the streamlining, analyzing, and optimizing of RSS feeds by using Feedburner, but if you have enough subscribers it’s an ad revenue stream as well. If I wasn’t consolidating and tracking my RSS subscribers through my Feedburner feed, I probably would have never bothered advertising within my feed. Feedburner makes it extremely easy to advertise in your feed once you hit 500 subscribers, so I’m now just making additional revenue without additional work. Bravo.
AdsBlackList
If you’re using Google Adsense, you should be using AdsBlackList. It’s a site that compiles user submissions of sites that are “Made For Adsense” sites and low cost per click advertisers. When you sign up for an account, it has you enter your site and some keywords about it. It then returns a list of “Made for Adsense” and low cost per click advertisers you can then ban from showing ads on your site. Besides probably helping increase the quality of ads, you’re also hurting the distribution of a lot of junk in Google’s system. I have not run specific tests on if the overall revenue per click goes up after banning their suggested lists, but other publishers have reported good results.
Google Analytics
Yes, it has performance issues. Yes, there is a lag time before you get your data. Yes, it’s Google. However, Google Analytics is still the most complete free web analytics tool out there. For this article, the benefit of Google Analytics as it relates to ad revenue is that you need to analyze your traffic and find out what type of content is interesting to them, what keywords are they using to find you, what referring sites are there, and what geography your users from.
Armed with that data you can now make decisions. Can you identify an underserved area of your site that users are interested in? Interested users means more page views which equals more money! Do you have a lot of visitors from a foreign country? Perhaps it’d be good to sign up with an ad network based in that country and geotarget it to those users with a tool like RMX Direct? You can’t make smart decisions without data, and Google Analytics provides it for free.
Amigo
For those of you who are still signing up users for email newsletters, Amigo operates much like an ad network except it’s a tool for email advertising. Sign up with Amigo and they’ll match ads and stick ads into your email newsletters earning you additional revenue. If you don’t have an email newsletter, maybe it’s time to start one?
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
I know this tool is meant for Adwords advertisers, but it can be a great way for publishers to find out what search phrases are paying a lot per click if they’re using Adsense or YPN. Click on the “Site-related Keywords” tab, and enter in the URL of a site in the topic you’d like to research. Check the “Include other pages on my site linked from this URL” box, then select “Cost and Ad Position Estimates”, and enter something large like $50.00. You’ll get a result that shows keywords along with an estimate of the CPC they require to get to the estimated ad position.
This is a rough way to find out what topics and terms are generating high revenue per click to focus your content. You can also get estimates of search volume and search volume trends if you’re curious as to how the keywords in the topic stack up there.
Yahoo/Overture Keyword Tool
The famous Yahoo/Overture tool returns keywords that contain the keyword you enter, along with the number of searches on Yahoo Search from the previous month. Many question the accuracy of this data as some strange terms sometimes have really high search counts, but regardless it can be a good estimate of search volume and provides a way to brainstorm additional topics to cover to get more traffic and ad revenue. It also provides a good counterbalance if you’re using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. If a keyword looks interesting to you in both tools, chances are it’s an interesting keyword in reality.
Quantcast
A newer and very cool data/ranking service is out called Quantcast. Quantcast “quantifies” publisher sites and provides an Alexa-like traffic estimate and ranking, but takes it a step further and provides demographic estimates of your audience such as age, gender, household income, ethnicity, and education.
It doesn’t stop there either, and shows interesting things like “Siteographics” which shows what entertainment the audience likes, what retail stores they shop at, and what magazines they check out. It also shows what keywords they used and what other sites are similar in audience. Here is the Quantcast data for YouTube.com.
Why is this cool? Well, once you start selling advertising on your site directly to advertisers, they are often interested in demographic data. The beauty of Quantcast is that they’ll get the data for you and you can point advertisers to this objective third party that has the data. If your site is big enough, they probably already have you listed. If not, you “Quantify” your site by placing a bit of code in the footer of your site template and it will start grabbing the data.
SurveyMonkey
If you don’t trust Quantcast or want your own specific data, you can use SurveyMonkey to create surveys you can show to your audience via popup windows or direct link. It’s a free service, and is pretty easy to use to setup surveys and distribute them.
Just like the benefits of Quantcast, this is great data to provide to advertisers about your audience, and SurveyMonkey results make a great addition to your online media kit or page that pitches advertising on your site.
Webmaster Forums
While not specifically a tool, I felt it necessary to point out some of the top discussion forums where there are web publishers talking about advertising and how to make more money. In no particular order here are ones that I’ve found value in on a consistent basis:
Conclusion
If you have additional tools to suggest, please list them below in the comments. If they make sense, I’ll add them to the list.
February 13th, 2007
Over the last few years contextual ad networks such as the Yahoo Publisher Network and Google Adsense have become powerhouses in the publisher advertising world. Even though ad servers were around long before these networks, many publishers and bloggers don’t bother using ad servers when working with them.
Part of the reason is they make it pretty easy to just slap their ad code on your site and get going, however that’s EXACTLY what they want you to do because then they own all access to that inventory. It can really help you dominate with contextual ad networks if you use an ad server in the ways listed below. Note: RMX Direct is the example ad server being used because it’s free, does all these things, and is the ad server I’m most familiar with at the moment. However, many of these concepts will work with other ad serving options.
1. Set Frequency Caps
Frequency capping is when you specify that you want to only allow a certain advertiser or ad network to receive a set number of impressions over a time period per user. For example, you could specify that you only want to show 10 Adsense impressions per hour per user. The rest of the impressions they’d get could be YPN, or other ad networks you may be working with. Why do this? The main reason is that if you just always show Adsense, the same ads are often shown throughout your site. If a user hasn’t clicked on any after a certain number of impressions, it may help to show YPN ads that have different ads, or YPN ads with a different visual look, or maybe even show CPM display ads.
2. Manage Multiple Color Palettes
With the recent Adsense policy changes requiring competing networks to have ads that have a different visual “look”, an ad server can make it easier to manage multiple color palettes. As mentioned above you can use frequency capping to run different visual looks, but you can also easily manage the delivery of those visual looks by creating multiple campaigns/placements in an ad server that can easily be turned on or off, and have the details adjusted.
3. Combat Smart Pricing
I’m not entirely sure if YPN has “Smart Pricing”, but with AdSense if you are serving ads across multiple websites and one of the websites has clicks not converting as well as others, that website will drag down your revenue per click as a whole. See more information on “Smart Pricing” here or here. Many publishers who realize this and deactivate Adsense from their poorly performing sites see an increase in click payouts due to smart pricing. With RMX Direct, if you suspect that one of your websites may be hurting your overall revenue per click due to Smart Pricing, you can stop serving AdSense ads to that site with the click of a button. There is no need to take down ad code off the site since it’s controlled through the ad server. Then you can also turn it back on with the click of a button, switch it to YPN ads, or do something else with it. It’s much easier and quicker than jockeying code around all over the place.
4. Track Impressions From Multiple Networks In One Spot
One thing that’s always annoying about working with multiple ad networks is having to login to multiple reporting systems to get data. With RMX Direct or another ad server, you can see your impressions for YPN and AdSense all in one place. Unfortunately, at this point most ad servers can’t show revenue data because the amount paid per click varies. As Adsense and YPN move more forward with APIs, we’ll probably see more ad servers finding ways to import that data as well.
5. Work Display Advertising Into The Mix
Users can become blind to contextual text advertisements, which can result in low click-through rates meaning poor revenue for you. Why not put some guaranteed revenue in your pocket by adding CPM display advertisements into the mix? RMX Direct takes that idea one step further beyond normal ad servers, as it has display networks built into the product to apply to and work with easily. They will compete with the prices of your contextual ad networks, making it a guarantee you’ll only earn more revenue. Competition is a beautiful thing.
But what about the “low” quality of many graphic ads? Excuse the sales pitch, but RMX Direct also has a tool called Media Guard that allows for insane control of the characteristics of ads you don’t want appearing on your site.
6. Analyze Geographic Distribution of Ads
The reporting systems of the contextual networks don’t give any geographical breakdown of where your ad impressions are coming from. Knowing this information can help you make decisions on the type of content you create, or if it makes sense to geotarget your ads. If you found out today that 70% of your ad impressions were coming from Europe, it might make sense to create more content for that audience. You can also set up channels with contextual networks and test using different color palettes in different countries to see the results. Different cultures feel different ways about various colors, it wouldn’t be surprising if users from different countries respond to ads differently.
7. Learn From Similar Publishers
This one isn’t available in most ad serving products, but one of the most powerful features of RMX Direct is our community. Sure, you can find a forum out there of AdSense or YPN publishers, but can you find a forum of people who are using both, plus a number of other ad networks at the same time? Our forum is full of publishers just like you who have been there and done that. Ask them for advice, they’ll be happy to help (as will the RMX Direct support staff).
8. Get RSS Reports of Impressions and Revenue Estimations
Building upon the idea of tracking impressions from multiple ad networks in one spot, some ad servers feature RSS reporting so you can get your stats right in your RSS reader. Again, with the contextual networks, at this point only the number of impressions shown can accurately be reported, along with an estimation of revenue if you’re using RMX Direct. But if you’re using the display networks in RMX Direct, it’s very handy to get the real revenue statistics through RSS.
9. Work With As Many Networks As You Can Handle
If your website doesn’t have much traffic, then you don’t need to work with many ad networks. However, if you get a decent amount of traffic and take advertising seriously, you should definitely work with as many ad networks as it makes sense for your traffic levels. To start out with, you have the ability to sign up with nine ad networks from the Right Media Exchange. However, once you start adding additional ad networks in, the sky is the limit. Work with whatever contextual networks you want. If fact, you can add networks from the whole spectrum, more display networks, more contextual networks, and even more affiliate advertisers.
10. Geotarget Your Ads
Which does better in Asia, YPN or AdSense? Want to find out? With RMX Direct, you can geotarget your advertising placements. It’s useful in a number of situations. Let me give you an example: let’s say you’ve noticed a spike in clicks from Russia and you’re worried about click fraud. The solution is simple, turn off contextual ad serving to that area with a quick click and save (if the problem is severe, please notify your ad network). As mentioned above, you can also target color palettes to specific regions, or eliminate showing contextual ads to any countries beyond the USA if you want to show different types of ads to international users. The power is in your hands.
Bonus tip: Instead of PSAs, show display ads.
With some contextual networks, you can specific what you want to do in the event a public service announcement (PSA) needs to be served. Well, don’t lose that impression and the money that comes with it, send it to an ad server like RMX Direct where you have display networks that can pay you a CPM for that impression. Simply put RMX Direct ad code into an HTML file and point the network to it. Behold, 100% fill rate for your advertising.
Conclusion
Hopefully the above tips showed that a whole new level of power is available in managing contextual networks by using an ad server. You put the control in your own hands and can use it to optimize your contextual advertising.
February 7th, 2007
When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion many people questioned whether it was a great deal or a big mistake. Over the last few months as Google started to get deals in the works with the networks who originally created the copyrighted content on YouTube, people started to just accept that the purchase was a good deal for Google. There is even evidence that with YouTube and Google Video together Google owns over half the online video market.
However, the CBS deal fell apart, and now comes word that Google’s negotiations with Viacom have gone poorly and Viacom is demanding Google remove over 100,000 clips from YouTube. They’ve also complained that they have not shown them or delivered the copyright protection software that they’ve been promising.
Ouch.
If this is a sign of things to come for Google and YouTube things may get rough. Users don’t have a ton of loyalty for the most part, and there are sites like DailyMotion.com that are not located in the USA who have an easier time hosting content under a copyright because they’re harder to go after. If YouTube is spending time and resources removing illegal content will there be a slow drop in their traffic as users held elsewhere?
Is this another Napster where they are sued to death while users migrate to the next place they can find what they’re looking for? I think it might be. Viacom, CBS, and others aren’t going to let Google profit from their content. They’re going to want a fat piece of that pie, and so far it doesn’t sound like Google is willing to give that to them.
February 2nd, 2007
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